My morning’s ritualistic reading of the New York Times unexpectedly transported me to my childhood, thanks to “A Lunch that Tastes Like Nostalgia,” Alex Witchel’s lively account of a midday repast at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Her article pays homage to a fading rite—the department store lunch—and shuttled me back to the 1960s, when my Aunt Helen would occasionally take me with her on the bus to downtown Cleveland, where she had standing Saturday appointments at Higbee‘s hair salon with Miss Rose.

Higbee’s was one of the late, great urban department stores, where you could get your nails done, buy furniture, browse through books and greeting cards, try on dresses, and—oh yes—have lunch. Back in the day Cleveland boasted four such retail havens: Besides Higbee’s there was Halle’s, the May Company, and Sterling Lindner-Davis.

At the Higbee salon I idled away the time looking at fashion and movie magazines, with the promise of lunch afterwards at the terribly sophisticated Silver Grille, followed by a visit to the girls’ clothing department, where Aunt Helen always bought me a dress.

So comforting were my memories of lunch with Aunt Helen at the Silver Grille that when Cleveland Landmarks Press published The Silver Grille: Memories and Recipes a number of years ago, I snapped up a copy at Walden Books.

Higbee‘s and the other stores are gone, now. (So, for that matter, is Walden’s.) The sturdy but elegant Higbee building still stands kitty-corner to the landmark Terminal Tower on Public Square (flanked, on the tower’s other side, by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel). The grand old store is now home to the Horseshoe Casino, and has been for exactly one year to the day that I’m posting this. Fans of A Christmas Story, filmed primarily in Cleveland, will remember Higbee’s; its iconic display windows feature prominently in the film and contained Ralphie’s holy grail—the Red Ryder BB gun.

But I digress. Nostalgia will do that to you. Witchel’s article inspired more than this reverie: It compelled me to pull out my copy of the Silver Grille cookbook.

The first recipe I turned to, for Maurice Salad, had become a longstanding favorite of mine long after I outgrew the creamed chicken, which arrived in its own cardboard oven.

The book notes that Higbee’s Silver Grille began serving meals to little tykes in this cardboard oven in 1974, but my memory (which could be faulty) suggests that I opened the oven doors to retrieve my creamed chicken and whipped potatoes in the 1960s.

Large cities with renowned department stores invariably opened satellites in suburban shopping malls, and Higbee’s was no exception. I often ordered this salad when my mother and I ate at the “Attic” in the Elyria Higbee’s. It was a charming place, but it was no Silver Grille. There could only be one. Happily, the food—if not the name—was the same.

Lunch is ready!

The Silver Grille’s Maurice Salad with Classic Maurice DressingAdapted from The Silver Grille: Memories and Recipes. Used with permission.

Note: The Silver Grill made the original Maurice Dressing with a commercial base not currently available, according to the cookbook. A recipe former Silver Grill employee devised this recipe.

Two more things you should know:

1. James A. Toman, publisher of Cleveland Landmarks Press, tells me that they are reissuing all of the previously published Silver Grille recipes in a new volume, Recipes from the Silver Grille. The book is forthcoming sometime in late summer; be sure to check out the publisher’s website for details.

2. The Silver Grille underwent an award-winning restoration in 2002 by the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland. Although no longer a restaurant, the hotel uses the spacious tenth-floor room as a “function space,” according to Kelsey Williams, senior marketing and PR coördinator of the Ritz-Carlton, which is the venue’s exclusive caterer.

The Silver Grille today, in its current incarnation as an event venue of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Photo courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton.

Do you have department store lunch memories of your own? Share them in the comments section below!

My mother, to quote Yul Brynner in The King and I, was a puzzlement. She was a first-generation Sicilian-American—strict and extremely Catholic—yet the legendary burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee so fascinated her that she purchased a copy of Lee’s autobiography. By the time I was six or seven and a book magpie, reading anything I found lying around the house, I picked up the memoir and dove in. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary had not yet been published, so if an unfamiliar word ground my reading to a halt, I went to my most trusted source: My mother.

“Mom, what does ‘lesbian’ mean?”

“What?” She pretended not to hear me.

“Lesbian. What does it mean? It says here that someone in the book couldn’t go back to Chicago, because they knew her there as a lesbian. What’s a lesbian?”

Having sufficiently recovered, my mother replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a kind of religion.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

It could be said that my mother taught me the art of dissembling—something that could come in handy later if I ever became a fiction writer. Or entered politics.

But that’s selling her short. Although it is true that she presented me with a lifetime of exasperating puzzles and mixed messages, she also taught me many wonderful things. Here’s a short list:

A love of Broadway musicals. (Hence the King and I reference.)

A love of classical music. (When I think of Saturday afternoons as a child, I always think of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts while cleaning the house. “Si mi chiamano,” choreographed with a dust rag, enhanced by the smell of Pledge.)

A love of dogs, as evidenced by this photograph.

The lesbian red herring notwithstanding, a respect for honesty and integrity, and an expectation of both from me.

An abiding faith in God. She might have skipped Mass with regularity, but she taught me how to pray. And she always believed that her own prayers would be answered.

A love of cooking and baking. I think the recipe section of my blog attests to this.

A sense of style and a love of fashion. We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, but my mother would rather go shopping than pay the electric bill. In this way and in others (again, I think of her disingenuous definition), I formed healthy and prudent life habits, sometimes as antidotes to her examples.

My mother was a complicated woman, which is to say that she was human. By trial and error, although often with her example to guide me, I figured out a way to be in the world.

Like this:

“For ‘Talk Stoop,’ I wore a blue and orange print Jenni Kayne skirt, a sheer black top and the black Casadei cage sandals. I want to kiss them and make out with them.”
—Heather Graham, “What I Wore”The New York Times
April 26, 2013

I ask you: Would you kiss these shoes?

Wednesday, April 24
No need to wake up early, since I’m not flying anywhere, so I lounged under the covers in the sleeveless coral nightgown my husband bought me for Christmas from Soft Surroundings. It has the sweetest ecru trim at the shoulders and neckline that seems as though it should be called lace, but it isn’t lace. I don’t know what it is. Crochet? Some other kind of needlework? How am I supposed to know these things? It might be crochet. My grandmother used to crochet afghans, which are blankets made out of large holes and yarn, and not Afghani dolls, although there might be some connection with Afghanistan. I’m not sure. My grandmother was from Lebanon. Anyway, I slept until the dog woke me up. Then I put on the ecru duvet slippers I bought on sale at Restoration Hardware. (Amazing. You go shopping for a brushed-nickel hook and end up finding the perfect slippers! I want to kiss them and make out with them!) I went downstairs and made coffee. When I added cream to my coffee it was the same color as my duvet slippers and the crochet on my nightgown. Ecru is my favorite non-color color, in that it reminds me of coffee.

Because I was getting a pedicure later that morning the woman at the salon asked me to wear flip-flops so the polish wouldn’t smear. I don’t own flip-flops, so instead I wore these beautiful blue leather slip-on sandals from Naot with my “Not Your Daughter’s Jeans” blue jeans and a Norton McNaughton navy boatneck three-quarter-sleeve top I bought on sale at Higbee’s in the 1980s. My mother always said: “Buy classic clothes and accessories and they’ll never go out of style.” She was right. I still wear two acrylic bracelets that I had in high school. The Naot sandals are insanely comfortable yet pretty; seven small rhinestones form a daisy petal on top of concentric stitched leather cutout petals. I want to kiss them and make out with them! It was cold and raining outside. I should have been wearing socks and warm shoes but what with the pedicure and all I couldn’t. As my godmother used to say: “You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

Thursday, April 25Woke up with a bad sore throat and a stuffy nose. I didn’t have any appointments outside the house, but contractors were stopping by to discuss installing a railing on our front stoop and a white picket fence in our backyard. Luckily it had stopped raining, which was good because I was going to be darting in and out. I selected the warmest, comfiest clothes I could find that still proclaimed “Spring!”: a Cleveland Indians hooded sweatshirt featuring Jacobs Field on the front, the NYDJ bluejeans, warm socks, and my Abeo running shoes.

I don’t run. I have bad knees. But I do walk the dog. A lot. Sandy typically requires three outings, on average, each day. This is in addition to the morning walk she has with John before he goes to work, and the walk he gives her right before bedtime. Walking is excellent exercise for those with bad knees, but regardless of what you do with your knees, comfortable footwear is essential. My midlife compatriots know what I’m talking about. What does a year of disco dancing in platform shoes in the ’70s get you? A generation of women with knees like rusty hinges.

Friday, April 26So excited! John and I had tickets to hear Michael Feinstein perform at Playhouse Square! My cold was a bit better, since I’d been popping Coldcalm like an opium fiend. I decided on my go-to evening-out attire: a black square-necked, dropped waist dress from Coldwater Creek. Because it was a bit chilly, I topped it with a black and grey duster from Barbara Lesser Studio. It looks like alligator skin but it’s not really alligator skin—I wouldn’t wear anything that harmed a reptile or a mink-like animal. I accessorized with a black beaded necklace set off by crystals and gold-like round things that I found at the bottom of my jewelry box, and my black acrylic bracelet from high school. Even though it was getting colder by the minute, I completed the look with dressy, black, open-toed sandals from Timberland to show off my pedicure.